CoinDash Recovers Another 20,000 Ether in Stolen ICO Funds

February 27, 2018

The world of cryptocurrency is full of surprises. Some of these surprises work out quite well, whereas others seemingly make no sense. After getting hacked in 2017, the CoinDash ICO team has received a second “reimbursement” from their attacker without further explanation.

The CoinDash ICO Saga Continues

When CoinDash conducted its ICO last year, a lot of people were excited about what this team could bring to the table. Unfortunately, all of the positive attention also led to increased scrutiny by cybercriminals trying to disrupt this initial coin offering. At one point, a lot of money wasstolenfrom investors, as the deposit address on the official website was compromised. A fair amount of funds were sent to the wrong address, which is still in control of a lot of funds.

However, it seems the assailant has run into some trouble cashing out the stolen funds. While controlling over 46,000 Ether represents a big paycheck for any hacker, converting that amount of crypto to fiat currency without raising suspicions is pretty much impossible. So far, only one transaction has been made to an address that is not the original CoinDash ICO address. That transaction took place almost six months ago.

Since that time, there has been someremorseon behalf of the culprit. 160 days ago, this hacker sent a transaction worth 10,000 Ether to the CoinDash team. It remains unclear if this was some sort of an apology or merely an attempt to taunt the team for their own screw-up. Regardless of the real story behind this transaction, it seems the assailant is not planning to cash out any of the stolen funds as of right now. Nor would he or she be able to, as this address has been flagged on the Ethereum blockchain.

Even so, the CoinDash ICO story is far from over. Three days ago, the hackersentanother batch of stolen funds back to the project’s team, for no apparent reason. This time, a total of 20,000 Ether was returned to its rightful owners, even though it remains unclear what the reason behind this second transaction was. It doesn’t make much sense for a hacker to return stolen funds without explanation, but in the cryptocurrency world, such things do tend to happen now and then.

Even though this change of heart raises a lot of questions, it is a positive development, all things considered. None of the actions taken by the hacker will prevent the CoinDash team from realizing their vision or rolling out their product this week. The new transaction has been reported to the Counter Cyber Terrorist Unit in Israel, and the hacker’s address will be monitored further. It is a very intriguing turn of events, although no one can make any sense of it.

Whether or not the hacker will send back the remaining funds remains to be seen. As of right now, the flagged account still holds over 13,000 Ether. At today’s prices, that represents a sum of nearly US$11 million in funds still in limbo. It is quite interesting how the “fake” address has also received a lot of airdrops from various ICOs and accrued a balance of US$81.21 as a result. It remains unclear what will happen to those funds moving forward.